John shared more memories from their youth:
We had a good childhood. We never had much in the way of material goods because the money just wasn’t there, but we always had enough to eat, and fresh warm clothes in the winter out of the Eaton’s catalogue. Every fall, Dad would measure us and would go out and visit the local Indians and trappers and there would be fresh moccasins every year. We always loved running through the bush in them. And the gauntlets — beaded and made by the local Indians, from whom Dad used to buy furs. He would load the car up on Friday night, and put the axe, saw, and chains in, and quite often he would have to build his own road to get out there. He would visit the trappers and would come back with his car loaded with wolf, fox, and coyote pelts. We would have loved to go with him, but this was business. He was selling to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and to another buyer in Vancouver, and he would go away on selling trips from time to time. George and Luby would also go on the train to sell the furs; Luby was more or less in charge, and George was there to protect them. George would be sixteen or seventeen at the time.
Along with his early entrepreneurial bent, George also had a strong sense of fair play that led him to organize some youthful protests in Edson. One of these occurred as a result of a price increase for chocolate bars after the war. Mary explained: “Chocolate bars had gone from five to eight cents, and George was one of the leaders of the protest in Edson. As a result, all the stores put the price down to five cents. It lasted two days — we had a two-day victory.” It was the spring of 1947, and chocolate companies had boosted the price of chocolate bars, claiming that production had dropped because of a disease afflicting cocoa beans on the west coast of Africa, increased demand from post-war Europe, and the removal of American import controls. All had combined to trigger a large price increase overnight. But Canadian kids weren’t buying it, and the famous chocolate-bar war quickly spread across Canada, ending only after a Toronto newspaper suggested that Communists had fooled Canadian kids into organizing the protest.1
Introduction to the Mountains
George’s introduction to the mountains came when he and John were still young. John recalls that they did quite a bit of hiking in the mountains when they were kids: “I remember one summer when we took the train from Edson to Jasper, and took the bus to Miette Hot Springs. My cousin, Bob, and another guy rode their bikes from Edson.” Later, when Marmot Basin opened in Jasper, George went there to race.
The person who played a pivotal role in introducing George to skiing in the mountains was Norman Willmore, the member of the legislative assembly for Edson-Jasper. John remembered him:
Willmore had the clothing store right across from the butcher’s shop where George had a job. And there was another fellow, I think he was a schoolteacher; they were avid skiers and they used to take the kids skiing. I went with him once; we drove up to Marmot Basin, back in 1948. We got to Jasper on gravel road in the winter … with Norman Willmore and the schoolteacher. Marmot Basin ski hill wasn’t developed then, but there was a snow cat, and it was four to six miles up to around treeline, where there was a chalet consisting of an unheated Quonset hut. From there we climbed; all we had were wooden skis with cable bindings that you tightened. We had no climbing skins; we just put a scarf or a rope on the skis — whatever we had — and we wound it around the skis. The snow was so deep; nothing was packed; it was just pure powder; and we would climb up and ski down.2 We made two or three runs in a day, if that many, and at the end of the day we skied out about six miles through a cut in the trees. Norman Willmore used to take the kids up regularly. George went often to Whistlers in Jasper;3 they would take the train up — it was only a three- or four-hour ride.
Lillian recalled that the Whistlers, later the site of the famous gondola ride, once had a rope tow. George had told his own children how they used to ski race there, and how one time he couldn’t stop, and went over a bank and ended up on somebody’s car. Looking at a picture of three people at a ski race in Jasper, John picked out his brother as the good-looking one with the trophy. John explained: “He is wearing a uniform shoulder patch that could be the Edson ski club, and he looks pretty spiffy,” adding that he always did.
Edson School Reunion
It was the Canada Day weekend in 2000, and I was driving from Prince George to Edmonton. En route I made a planned stop in Edson to see what I could find of George Evanoff’s roots. In the twenty-two years since I moved to Prince George, this was only my second drive through Edson, and so it was by a remarkable providence that the July 1, 2000, weekend coincided with a high school reunion. By that time, the population of Edson was about 7,400 — four times the size of the Edson of George’s youth, but still very much a small town.
Located over halfway from Edmonton to Jasper on the Yellowhead Highway, Edson’s economy today is based mainly on oil, gas, coal, and timber. It has a long airport runway, which was a factor in Edson’s emergence as the local centre for oil and gas development over the rival town of Hinton, located eighty-five kilometres to the west. The city emblem shows distinctive snow-capped mountains with forests and a river, and in the foreground is a two-lane highway, fronted by a tree — this imagery sums up aspects of George Evanoff’s life.
First I drove out to the Willmore Municipal Park on the McLeod River, southwest of town. I walked around the park, talked with the caretaker, and looked at George’s first ski hill, now used for tobogganing. I bushwhacked along the McLeod River, and saw the rapids that George and Bob had nearly drowned in. After lunch, I drove into town and parked near the red-brick school. This imposing three-storey structure was built in 1913, only two years after the town of Edson was incorporated. It was Edson’s only school until the mid-1940s, and was the one that George Evanoff attended until grade nine. The building was used as an elementary school until 1967, after which it was used by the school district for maintenance and busing purposes. The Edson Cultural Heritage Organization took it over in 1984, and began the lengthy process of renovation to create the Edson Red Brick Community Arts Centre and Museum.
As I first walked around the outside of the building, I saw a large structure set on spacious grounds. Inside, I found George’s old classroom, still looking pretty much as it had in his day, with decades-old sturdy wooden furniture. In the grade twelve graduating class yearbook for 1950, there was a photograph of the Teen Club executive, which included tall, teenaged George Evanoff, the treasurer, and an accompanying biographical rhyme:
He taps his pencil, the girls complain,
Say he’s driving them insane,
Keeps Teen Club finances straight,
Skiing, bowling, fill his slate.
Earlier yearbook entries for George Evanoff provided by Paul Kindiak and Lillian Evanoff reveal his nickname, “Pork” or “Porky,” an antonym, no doubt, for his trim build. It is noteworthy that at only sixteen years of age, George already had his sights set on his eventual career path:
Grade ten (1948) Name: George Evanoff Nickname: Pork Chief Interest: Rods and Reels Chief Dislike: Dancing (oh, those fast ones) Weakness: The opposite sex Favourite Saying: ‘Don’t be nuts’ Ambition: Electrical Engineer
George Evanoff’s official Government of Alberta high school transcript for 1947 to 1950, showed that he was an overall A student. Except for a C in social studies, all of his grades were either As or Bs. Not surprisingly, in light of his later path through life, he earned As for physical education, math, sciences, and business.
New Horizons
As George Evanoff matured as a teenager, he was no longer satisfied with the activities that were available in Edson. According to his son, Craig, George “could see the mountains on the eastern boundary of Jasper National Park, and was drawn to higher places.” From Edson, George started making trips on the train out to Jasper to go skiing, and then he worked in Jasper in the summer. When